It cannot now be necessary to enter into the detail of the national government; but it was of a much more popular order than might be conceived from the formalities of Austria. Each of the great provinces--Lombardy and Venice--had a species of administrative council, consisting of deputies from the minor provinces, each returning two, the one a noble and the other a plebeian, with a deputy from each of the royal towns, the whole being elected for six years. Those bodies, though not entitled to make laws, had yet important functions. They settled the proportion of the taxes, superintended the disbursements for roads, and had the especial care of the charitable establishments. Nor were these all. In every chief town there was a local administration, especially superintending the finance of their respective districts; and the general taxation seemed to have been light, and but little felt, and scarcely complained of. Burke, in one of his prophetic anticipations, pronounced that the first ruin of Europe would be in its finance, and that every kingdom was, even in his day, wading into a boundless ocean of debt. Austria, of course, had felt its share; and after the desperate wars of 1805 and 1809, nothing is more wonderful in the history of finance, or more honourable to the great statesman who for forty years presided over her fate, than that she should have escaped bankruptcy. But her liberality to her Italian provinces never failed. Some of the details, which have already reached the public, give an extraordinary conception of the almost prodigality with which Austria has lavished her means upon the bridges, roads, and general public communications of Lombardy. We give those items in francs. Five millions spent in repairing and constructing dikes in the Mantuan province. Four millions in completing the canal of the Naviglio. A million and a half for roads in the mountains of the Bergamesque. A million and a half for the great commercial road of the Splugen. Two millions and a half for the road over the Hiffer Jock. Three millions for continuing it along the shore of the lake Como. Three millions and a quarter for completing the cathedral of Milan. A million for improvements in the city. Half a million for the fine bridge over the Ticino.